


No Past to Hold Me Down

by Prismabird



Category: Midnight Cowboy (1969)
Genre: Cuddling, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Prostitution, Slash, emotional issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 10:51:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5045500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prismabird/pseuds/Prismabird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the first time in his unfortunate life, Joe makes makes a good decision and now that he and Rico Ratso Rizzo are alive and (relatively) well down in Florida, well, certainly the worst is behind them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Past to Hold Me Down

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t expect anyone to read this any time in the near future. But one day, someone will sit down and watch Midnight Cowboy, fall in love with it, and think, ‘I wonder if anyone’s written any fanfic for that.’ Because the answer is ‘not much’, I’m putting this story here as a kind of artifact for that person to find and (hopefully) enjoy.
> 
> Second note: After seeing the film, I bought and read the book. Certain elements of this story reference the novel by James Herlihy, because I now picture the characters as sort of composites from both. Two major differences I've referenced: Joe, in the novel, was raped by a sadistic man named Perry who was posing as Joe’s friend to get into his pants (and possibly to pimp him as well). Unlike in the movie, it happened right before Joe went to New York, and had nothing to do with his girlfriend Annie. Second, in the book, Joe watches a sci-fi film, and later walks around New York pretending to be an alien, secretly greeting ‘earthlings’. This wasn’t in the film either. There are other references, but they shouldn't confuse the reader. 
> 
> Like the movie, this story contains homophobic language, spoken exclusively by gay characters who have internalized society’s homophobia to the point of self hatred. If that’s not your cup of tea, I’d recommend the back button (though I have to wonder how you managed to make it through the movie).

No Past to Hold Me Down 

Joe Buck learned about antibiotics on the night of December 30th, 1969, the night he dragged a delirious and howling Ratso for a bone cold eight blocks to the tiny charity clinic up in Clinton. Of course, Joe already knew about medicine - he wasn’t a complete simpleton - and he knew that Ratso needed some, and bad, but it was that night that he heard all about bacteria, and cell walls, and how antibiotics were gonna blast all the bugs right out of Ratso’s body. And Ratso, well, he had often spoken of Florida as his own personal hope and heaven, but Joe reckoned antibiotics had Florida beat a thousand times over.

The doctor running the tiny clinic was kinder than she had to be, Joe thought, seeing as how they looked like two men who couldn’t pay, and were. She stuck a needle in Ratso’s arm, injecting him with a yellowish liquid which she explained would help kill the infection in his lungs and blood. Joe listened attentively, made her repeat everything, and asked her how to spell antibiotics. She did so, twice, then wrote it down for him.  

She told Joe that he’d need to bring Mr. Rizzo (not Ratso, Mr. Rizzo, that was what she called him) back the next morning and next evening for follow up doses. “He’ll have to take pills for two weeks after that. You’ll need a pharmacy. Can you afford pills?”

“How much do they cost?” Joe asked. 

“It varies,” she answered. At his blank look - “It depends on what each pharmacy carries. Not very much.”

Joe wasn’t bright, but he knew that “not very much” could mean a lot of different things to different people. But it didn’t matter. He’d get the money. He’d do what he had to do.

He did. And then there was Townie, both a horror show and a windfall. 

They boarded their bus to Miami that night, pills in tow. Joe clutched at the bottle in his pocket with one hand, tracing A-N-T-I-B-I-O-T-I-C-S over and over again on his thigh with the index finger of his other until he fell asleep. He dreamed. In his dream, Ratso grew weaker, seemed to shrink and shrivel beside Joe until he finally died, eyes staring blankly out the window. In his dream, Joe took the body of his only friend in his arms while old ladies in sunglasses stared at him, as if daring him to cry. In his dream, he did not. And then he woke up hollering, his face wet.

“Christ, Joe! What’s the matter!?” Ratso snapped in the seat beside him, his voice still thick and rattling, but improving already.

“Nothing” Joe replied, catching his breath. “Nothing’s the matter.”

“Good,” Ratso said. “Thought you might be losing your damn mind.” He curled back up and pulled a stained blanket around his shoulders. 

It was January 2, 1970. The Greyhound bus sped away, leaving both the city and the sixties firmly behind them. So much was behind them now, Joe hoped. So much.

* * * * * * 

“All I’m saying” chattered Rico (per his request, this is what he was called in Florida), “All I’m saying is that if we lift our food for the next week, there’s plenty in the jar over there for one of those big cabana umbrellas out by the water. That’s the truth, I counted it. There’s even enough for, ah, for a couple of pina coladas on the little table too. Sounds pretty good to me. Hey, are you listening?”

The two of them were sitting hip to hip on the stained comforter of their bed at Motel 6, TV turned to some movie of the week. Rico had his bum right leg propped up over’s Joe’s left, like he always did when the pain got to be too much, cigarette hanging from his lips. Joe, as usual, had shaken his head when Rico lit it, (the clinic doctor had urged them both to quit), but his irritation didn’t last long before he was lighting one of his own. 

“Yeah, I’m listenin’, I’m listenin’” Joe said, exhaling a cloud. “I’m listening to you plan a trip in the back of a squad car, boy. Bail costs a hell of a lot more than a can of soup, you know.” 

“Ah, have some faith, Joe, have some faith! You talk like I never lifted food before - you talk like you never _helped_ me lift food before.”

“Yeah, well, we don’t have to do none of that no more! It was one thing to go lifting when we was starving, but I ain’t stealin’ food just because you want to spend a day sitting around in a cabana drinking pina whatevers. Damn foolish shee-it, boy, like we could get you out on the sand what with your leg like it is anyway.” 

“All right, all right!” Rico said, “leave my leg out of it.”

“I swear to God, you get yourself copped, I’m gonna start calling you Ratso again, and that’s a fact.”

“You do that and I could think of a few nice things to call _you_ , ya Forty-Second street faggot.”

At that, Joe felt his blood boil, so he nudged Rico’s bad leg. Rico winced and Joe’s anger quickly turned to shame. He wasn’t usually the violent type ( _‘I deserve it, Joe, I deserve it!’_ ) and certainly not with Rico, the only person who hadn’t abandoned him, or died without telling him, or pushed him down a hole. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“ ‘sokay” Rico muttered back. “ ‘sokay, I shouldn’t call you that anyway. You ain’t that guy no more.” 

“Me neither. I mean, I’ll only call you Rico now.” 

“That’s right,” Rico agreed. “In Florida, I’m Rico, and you’re Joe, and we don’t have no past to worry about. We sprung right out from the coconut trees, isn’t that right?” 

Joe, who never had any real idea of where he might have sprung from in the first place, rather liked this image, the idea of him and Rico as little embryos floating in the fuzzy brown fruit of a palm tree, visible through a clear window on the side. In his mind’s eye, the two of them looked like pictures in a biology book Joe had in the seventh grade, before he’d finally stopped bothering with school all together. 

“Anyhow,” Rico continued, “we can have our pina colada’s by the pool if it makes you happy.” 

The Motel 6 pool was a sad state of affairs if Joe had ever seen one - a slightly green, 8‘x14’ rectangle with a couple of floating leaves and screaming kids bobbing in the water. In their entire five month stint in Miami, Joe was pretty sure maintenance had only cleaned it once. He smiled. “Thanks, Rico.” 

“Don’t mention it.” They went back to watching TV, Joe absently massaging the tension out of Rico’s twisted thigh. On the screen (In Technicolor! as advertised on the sign), a young girl sat at a piano with an older man, practicing scales. “Very good, very good!” the man said, running his hand through her chestnut hair, then again, and down her back. “Very good.” Again, up and down her back. Joe’s stomach started to hurt.

“Aw, man, I knew this was some kind of creepy crime movie, but I didn’t know it was gonna be the, whatchacallit, the pervert type,” Rico said, pulling a face at the screen. “What’s the world coming to anyhow, Joe? Seems like these days, it don’t count as art unless it’s full of perverts.”

Joe stayed silent. For the first time in a long time, he felt afraid to speak, afraid to expose his own ignorance, even to Rico. He knew a thing or two about perverts - about junkies and jackies and hustlers like himself, about faggots and thieves and just about everyone coming and going on 42nd street, but the television showed none of that. In fact, the short scene, now over, was simple, domestic, almost mundane in its innocence. Joe swallowed. It made him want to throw up. He didn’t know why. 

“Jesus, Joe, sit still, you’re jerkin’ my leg around. What’re you shaking for?” Rico’s eyebrow shot up. “You sick or something? You’re all pale and sweaty, are you getting sick?” 

Joe shook his head, not at all sure of the answer, but not trusting himself to open his mouth. An un-summoned memory of Woodsy Niles appeared in his head ( _“good job, Joe, hold it just like that!”_ ) and vanished just as quickly. It made Joe cold all over - he hadn’t spared a thought for that old cowboy friend since his and Rico’s perilous bus ride to Miami. Cowboys, even kindly old Woodsy, were an artifact of Joe’s past, an intruder wrecking his new mental picture of babies growing in coconuts. 

“Maybe you should lie down,” Rico said, shifting over and helping Joe’s head down to the pillow. “Yeah. You need to lie down.” And then he lay down beside Joe and began to wait. Rico was used to Joe taking a few moments, or even several minutes, to explain just what was happening in his head. Unlike Rico, he didn’t have many words - his thoughts all came to him in pictures and feelings, an inarticulate mental abstract. And when the words did come, finally, they came in a jumble, a tangental tangle which needed to be carefully decoded. At first, it seemed like it took Rico some effort, but over time, he’d become quite fluent in the language of Joe. 

Today, however, Joe had nothing to give him. The strange scene, the odd sick feeling, old memories of Texas best left alone, Sally, Woodsy, Perry ( _no, please, not him, stay out of my brain you son of a bitch_ ), Cass, cold nights standing on 42nd street, watching the discarded, disposable tissue people come and go - all of it tumbled around his mind like clothes in a dryer. He started to feel dizzy. “I wanna go to sleep,” was all he said. Rico stared at him. It was 9:45pm, and neither he, nor Rico, who tore tickets at the evening movie shows, had to worry about being to work before 4:00pm the next day.

On the TV, a squad of cops were searching the woods, flashlights bobbing through the trees, and Joe made the connection that the piano man had run off with the little girl. He closed his eyes shut tight as they would go. “ ‘m Tired,” he said. “Turn that off and put on the goddamn radio, would ya?”

“Okay, Joe.” Rico’s voice was a little slow, as if it were feeling its way around a new, unfamiliar corner in the dark. “Okay. Light on or off?”

“W’tever you want.”

Eyelids still squeezed tight, Joe heard the click of the overhead light switch, then a second click as Rico shut off the TV, and a third, as he tuned the transistor on to The Association. _“Never, my love...never, my love...”_ Another click, and Joe opened his eyes this time. Silhouetted in the bathroom door frame, Rico was stripping out of his shirt, and then struggling, tried to step out of his pants without falling over. A pang of panic struck Joe, and he jumped to his feet in one quick movement. “Hang on, let me help!”

“Joe, ferchristsake, get back to bed, I’m fine!” Rico snapped, but he took Joe’s arm anyway so he could step out of his pants and strip down to his boxer shorts. Once he’d helped Rico to bed, Joe did the same, down to his tighties. Florida in the summer, it turned out, smothered with its heat almost as bad as New York numbed with its winter cold. Their AC sporadic at best, Joe and Rico spent most nights sleeping in their underwear - though, there were also the nights where they stripped down all the way. Rico always called their activities on these nights ‘fag stuff,’ but Joe disagreed. He reasoned that he was done with sex, and if two men who never got laid ‘t all shared a bed, and played with their pieces in front of each other, kissed a little, or stroked each other’s pricks, well, that wasn’t _really_ sex, right? “If it ain’t sex, it ain’t queer, and if it _is_ queer, then I don’t reckon I care.” This reasoning fit Joe just fine.

But whatever it was called, Joe wasn’t about to do any of it right now, at least not with Rico. A part of him, some New York part of him, or Texas part of him, wouldn’t mind a stranger tonight. Joe knew where the weird people like himself, his Cowboy self, hung around in Miami. He knew that there were hidden nooks and booths and bathrooms with plenty of room for a man to get to his knees. The thought coaxed a strange little sound from his throat. 

“Hey, Joe, I’ve been thinking,” Rico said, hand to Joe’s bare back. “I’ve been thinking that you and me got a lot of money in that jar under the bed there. We’ve been saving real good, Florida’s been real good to us, and what kind of, uh, what kind of asses would we feel like if someone broke in and took it? Maybe, you know, it’s time we got ourselves a proper bank account?”

Joe’s sigh was thin and watery, and he wished he knew why. “I don’t know how to do that,” he said. “Never had no bank account.” 

“So we figure it out,” Rico said. “You ain’t never filled out a work application before either, but we got you that roadwork job, didn’t we?”

“You had to spell all the words.” 

“Yeah, and you have to fill the potholes and pave the fucking highway. I can’t do that, can I?”

It was true. Though he got around all right these days in his second hand wheelchair, after a while Rico had trouble keeping his breath, and when it came to hard labor, well, he was unable to even stand for more than ten minutes at a time. On a good day. With help.

“Yeah, all right,” Joe said, closing his eyes. 

_“Hey, Joe.”_ Joe opened them again, but this time, it wasn’t Rico, but their little transistor. _“Where you going with that gun in your hand? Hey, Joe, I said where you going with that gun in your hand?”_

Joe, like many people who had lived through long stretches of social isolation, had a way of honing in on the sound of his own name like it was gospel comfort. This had been one of Perry’s many tricks for him, though Joe never did realize it. Now, as his inner world was having its own private earthquake, Joe listened to Jimi Hendrix call to him through his radio as if the song were imparting some vital message, something to hold to while he shook apart. “Hey, Rico, you think I should get a gun?” he said, finally.

In the darkness, Joe felt the mattress shift beside him, felt Rico pull his head up from the pillow. “What? Where did that come from, what the hell do we need a gun for?”

To Joe, the answer was obvious. “In case someone tries to get at us!”

“That’s what the bank is supposed to be for!” 

“Not at our _money,_ ya damn thief, that’s all you think about! At us!”

“Hey, don’t you start in on that thief stuff with me!” Rico snapped. “How about you be smart and don’t go getting into fights, and no one will try to get at us! It ain’t like I’m picking pockets and you’re standing on the goddamn street no more, Joe, people got no reason to get at us now.”

Joe huffed. “What you know about it, boy, ain’t no one in their right mind ever try to get at you.”

“You kidding me? I’ve had my ass kicked all up and down every street in Manhattan! Everyone and their uncle's taken a swing at me.” Rico shook his head, and Joe felt it at the back of his neck, that’s how close they were. After a pause, Rico said, “Are you talking about sex?”

“Never mind, it don’t matter none.”

“ ‘Cause unless ‘roadwork’ means something different than I thought, you’re not offering it no more, and you’re a damn big guy, Joe. No one’s gonna come at you and take it from you, ‘cept maybe if you was in prison. You don’t need to worry about it, you’re no little lady.”

And that was when Joe lost his mind. 

“You don’t know _nothin’!”_ he shouted, “Fuckin’ Ratso, you don’t know a goddamn thing ‘bout it! People don’t trick you none, no one never tricked you into nothing, cause you’re slippery as a goddamn sewer rat! Even if they wanted it, bet they couldn’t hold you down without gettin’ rabies and scabies!”

Joe moved fast, a lot faster that Rico ever could. He was out of the bed, pants on, shirt and sneakers in hand before Rico had even gotten his legs over the side. “Hey, whoa, calm down, hey, just cool it, Joe!” he said, but Joe’s fuse was lit, and he was out the door before he was even dressed. 

_Mean, mean, mean words_ Joe kept thinking over and over in his head as he raced out of the parking lot, still buttoning his shirt. Not any particular mean words, mind you, just that phrase repeated in his mind. _Mean words, mean words, I said a lot of mean words..._

He walked fast, not thinking about where he was going and knowing exactly where he was going. He had no money on him, not now, but he was only walking a few miles, and there would be taxi fare back. No problem. 

_Mean words, meanie, Ratso, Ratso, Ratso_ his mind kept cycling, and Joe reached up and bit down hard on his thumb to stop it. He didn’t want to think about Rico, because then he would worry like he always did when he left his friend alone, what if Rico got sick, what if Rico needed help, what if Rico got up to take a piss and fell down, what if Rico tried to come find him, what if?

A man walked passed him, and Joe found himself greeting the man under his breath: “hello, earthling.” Yes. That old New York game of his, playing he was the strange alien voice from the movie, before Rico and his goddamn coconut dreams ever existed, that was better. That was better. _“Earthling, earthling, hello earthling... I come in peace.”_

All the way to the South Ave ( _“you boys been down to hooker heights?” Paul on the road crew had asked his hungover crew mates, and everyone had laughed_ ), Joe quietly greeted earthlings. The repetition of it helped him, kept him moving and calm, and each _‘earthling’_ shed from Joe a little more of something he couldn’t fully identify; whatever it was, losing it helped him reorganize himself into his most basic components. These are my shoes, he thought, these are my feet. My legs my cock my chest my shirt my hands my mouth, I am made of these things. I know what to do with these things.

It took him some time, but he was finally there, he was just standing there on that dark street, a few others in the shadows around him, others like him. Joe felt like his body was made of live wire, like if someone touched him they might get a terrible shock. His fingers jittered and spasmed, tightened into fists, fidgeted with his shirt. He knew he must look like a loon, like an acid freak or a coke head or something, but he’d bet that wouldn’t much hurt his score. Buying junkie whores was like shopping at the Salvation Army - quality might be shit, but the price was right. He’d seen it enough times on good ol’ 42. 

He was right. Twenty minutes of fidgeting yielded the attention of a round faced Cuban-looking man who, after a moment’s appreciative glance, came to stand beside Joe, trying to look casual. “Guero,” he said. “It’s hot out here, and there’s nothing to do. I’ve got ten dollars to take you to a movie. You like the movies?”

Joe nodded that he did, and they walked off together, heading away from the theater. “Yeah, I think you like the movies. All kinds,” the man went on. “Nice movies and dirty movies. Lots of suck off in those dirty movies. You like a ten dollar movie like that?” 

Joe nodded that he did.

“What’s your name?” the round faced man said. 

“Don’t have one,” Joe said.

“Oh, he can speak!” the man exclaimed. “I’ll tell you my name first. I’m Ernesto, and I like to know the names of the people I go to the movies with. What name did your mama give you?”

“Don’t have one,” Joe repeated. “I was born from a coconut,” he added for good measure. 

Ernesto laughed deep. “A big blonde man like you? Don’t look like it to me, but whatever you say. I’ll just keep calling you Guero, either way.”

Ernesto’s room at the Budget Inn was both better and worse than Joe and Rico’s digs at Motel 6. It was bigger, without the dark spot on the ceiling shaped like a duck, but with a big, ugly stain on the carpet. It made Joe think of Townie, and made him feel sick to look at it, so he looked away and tried focusing his attentions on his john. Ernesto stood, framed in the bathroom door, belt already off, hands to his zipper. “You need a little drink?” he asked, slipping himself out of his fly. “You got the shakes something bad, my friend.” 

“I need Rico,” Joe heard himself say. 

“Huh? No, my name’s Ernesto. Why don’t you take off those clothes? It’s terrible hot tonight.”

“I wanna go home,” Joe said, and the words came out of him in a sort of desperate high whine, his voice edged with tears. “I gotta go home to Rico, now.”

Ernesto stared at him for a moment, semi-hard cock still in hand, stared at this great big man about to start crying like a kid. Lips tight, he tucked himself away. “You don’t want to do this, Guero, you shouldn’t go standing around on street corners. You’re very lucky I’m a nice man. Go home to your Rico.” He paused. “Do you live very far away?”

Joe didn’t look up, didn’t trust himself to speak. 

Ernesto stepped into the bathroom and came back out with a dollar. “I’m a very nice man,” he said again, and Joe could hear that he was being genuine, that his kindness was a point of pride for him. “I’m going to give you a dollar to get home. Your Rico, I think, would not like you to stand out selling yourself on the corner, so you take a bus home to him, and you be good by him.” Ernesto paused again. “He’s good to you, this Rico?” 

“Yeah,” Joe said. “He’s good.”

“Good. Go home, Guero. I don’t want to see you again.”

“My name’s Joe.” 

“All right,” Ernesto said, and Joe could already picture his face fading away, another kind stranger lost behind the sky. “Go home, Joe.”

A dollar would buy him the four or so miles by taxi. Taxis in Miami weren’t as plentiful as in New York, where they made the streets into a yellow sea, but Joe still didn’t have to wait long. After a moment’s struggle to remember it, he gave the motel address to the driver and sat in the back, holding in his tears. In the window reflection, he caught a glimpse at his miserable face and had to look away, so instead, he rested his forehead against the cool glass, hoping it might soothe his head and right his topsy turvy world. It didn’t, but he was lucky he’d tried anyway, because half a mile from the motel - 

“Hey, STOP!” Joe cried, and the cabbie startled, slammed on the brakes. 

“What’s the matter with you!?” the driver barked, but Joe ignored him and threw the dollar onto the seat, jumping out of the cab. 

Out on the sidewalk, Rico looked, maybe, even more a mess than Joe’s own reflection. Hair damp with sweat, shirt out his fly, Rico worked his wheelchair forward, trying to keep his breath. “Rico!” Joe cried out, running to his friend. He didn’t know what else to say, delighted to be back at Rico’s side, yet with his stomach knotted in shame and sorrow for causing him such visible distress. “Rico!”

“Joe, you damn crazy bastard!” Rico shouted up at him through gasping, wheezy breaths. “You dumb hick! You’re lucky I don’t kick your ass right here and now!”

“I’m sorry!” Joe said. “Really, I’m sorry! Here.” He took his place behind the handles of Rico’s chair and started pushing. “Here, let’s go back home.”

  “I didn’t say I wanted you to push me,” Rico grumbled, but he was in no position to refuse, and they both knew it. 

As they walked the short distance through the darkness, the heavy silence between them tightened the already hard squeeze in Joe’s chest and throat. _Meany,_ he thought again, and tears began to fall from his eyes. “I’m real sorry,” he said, and could not help the embarrassing shaky timber of his voice. 

“Aw, Jesus, Joe, don’t cry over it,” Rico said, slumping a bit in his chair. “You’re a hot mess tonight, you know that?”

“Can’t help it,” Joe sobbed, “I think I’m upside down.”

This was Joe’s strange language which Rico knew well. “Okay, well, then let’s get inside and back to bed. You’ll, ah, you’ll probably be right side up again in the morning, you know?” No one nearby enough to witness their odd little spectacle, they made their way back to their room, and Joe helped an exhausted Rico up, out of his clothes, and back into bed, sporadically hiccuping the whole time. “Light out,” Rico reminded him, once Joe was stripped down as well, and Joe felt so grateful for that simple, gentle instruction that he began to sob all over again. 

“C’mere,” Rico said, reaching out in the darkness once Joe had climbed under the sheet. “C’mere Joe, it’ll be all right now.” Rico was small, much smaller than Joe, but he took Joe into his arms anyway. Joe sighed, wanted to lay his head on his friend’s chest, but he worried the weight might be too much for Rico’s lungs, so he pressed his nose against Rico’s shoulder instead. “Where’d ya go tonight,” Rico said. It was no question.

“I couldn’t do it,” Joe replied, voice wet. If Rico was bothered by tears and snot, he didn’t move away.

“You went to go sell,” Rico said, because when Joe couldn’t be clear, sometimes Rico had to be. “And you couldn’t go through with it.”

“Yeah.”

“Anyone do anythin’ to hurt you?”

“No.”

“No one, ah, made you do anythin’ at all?”

“No. He was nice,” Joe sniffled. “He gave me a dollar and told me to go home and be good.”

“Okay. All right. Don’t ever do that again, okay?” 

Joe nodded his head against Rico’s shoulder. “I’m gonna do good by you,” he added. 

“God _damnit,_ Joe,” Rico said. “Not ‘cause of me. I don’t _own_ you or nothing. Don’t do it ‘cause it fucks with your head! Even when you don’t go all the way through with it, Christ, look at what it _does_ to you!”

“Don’t you want...” Joe swallowed, breathed deep. “You want me to do good by you?”

The darkness felt suddenly big to Joe, huge even, and it took Joe a tick to realize why, to realize just what he was asking. “Yeah, Joe,” Rico said, after a moment, and pressed his head against Joe’s sandy hair, rocked them both back and forth a few times. “Yeah, I’d like us to do good by each other.” 

They stayed like that for a moment before Rico started to laugh. 

“What’s funny?” Joe asked.

“Just, y’know, the though of me not doing good by you,” Rico said, laughing again. “With _who_ , ferchristssake!?”

Joe was pretty sure he got the joke this time, that Rico wouldn’t be with anyone else because he had _never_ been with anyone else, until Joe came along, ( _“Goddamn,” Rico panted, “that was the first time I ever did it with someone in the bed with me,”_ ), but it made him frown, made him think of things he’d said. “Called you Ratso,” he mumbled.

“Huh?” Rico asked.

“’m sorry I was mean to you,” Joe said tightly.

“Joe, I swear it, if you start cryin’ again, I’m having you committed,” Rico sighed. “C’mon now, didn’t we both say some lousy things? It’s all right, I’m sorry too.” He paused. “I was thinking about what I said that...set you off like that. And, you know...I _don’t_ know anything about people coming at me like the way you was talking about. But if someone goes and tricks a man into something, it ain’t that man’s _fault,_ right?”

“I...guess not,” Joe said. 

“No, it ain’t his fault,” Rico stated. “It ain’t his fault. And the world’s crazy all over the place, so I guess a man could trick a man somewhere that’s not even prison, even if that man’s not a lady, right?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Joe said. 

“All right,” Rico agreed, held him for a while longer. “Joe?”

“What?”

“It’s so hot I’m about to sweat to death,” Rico said, letting Joe go, but not before leaning down and kissing his mouth. Joe smiled, kissed him back.

“You know what? I’m gonna ask for an extra shift next week,” Joe said. “And you bet your ass we’ll have enough money to rent us that big cabana umbrella by the water for a day. And get a couple of pina colinas.” 

“Pina _coladas,_ ” Rico said. “How’m I gonna get out to a cabana by the ocean?”

Joe grinned. “I’m gonna carry you, ya doofus.” 

“I didn’t ask you to carry me,” Rico grumbled, but they both knew that Joe would.


End file.
